Owl Photography in Calgary, Canada - March 2024
Four days exploring the countryside around Calgary in search of Great Grey Owls and other winter owl species.
In March 2024 I travelled to Calgary in Canada for an eagerly awaited four days of owl photography. Having had a disappointing trip to Sax-Zim Bog in Minnesota the previous year, I had high hopes for this one.
I’d booked four days with Ken Anderson Photography, who turned out to be an excellent choice. I’d been following Ken’s Instagram account for several years and was always slightly envious of the images and videos he was posting.
If you’re looking for a local guide, I can’t recommend him enough. Ken has been photographing the owls in and around Calgary for more than 15 years and has never baited them — something I was particularly keen to ensure when choosing a guide, as baiting is unfortunately still used by some photographers and guides in Canada and the US.
Each morning started at 7am when Ken picked me up from the hotel. On that very first morning, as the sun was beginning to rise, he told me that we were entering owl territory and to keep my eyes peeled.
We turned the next corner and there it was — my first Great Grey Owl, sitting on top of a telegraph post beside the road.
Seeing a Great Grey Owl for the first time would have been special whatever the circumstances, but the conditions made that first encounter particularly memorable. The rising sun was casting a beautiful pink glow across the landscape, with the Rocky Mountains in the distance behind it. After travelling all that way hoping to photograph these incredible owls, having my very first sighting in such beautiful light was a moment I won’t forget.
With me I had my Nikon Z9 and 400mm f/2.8 TC, which was the equipment I used throughout the trip. Occasionally I added a 2x teleconverter and would even shoot with both the 2x and the lens’s built-in 1.4x TC engaged for additional reach. I continued to be pleasantly surprised by the quality of the results even with that combination.
Over the next few days I quickly learnt that the owls around Calgary were nowhere near as flighty or wary of people as many of the owls I photograph in the UK. They would sometimes land on a nearby post or fly past at remarkably close range, which led to some amazing experiences over the four days.
One of the most memorable involved another Great Grey Owl. We were watching it perched in a tree when it suddenly flew down and landed on a fence post only metres in front of me. Moments later it dropped to the ground, basically at my feet, caught a vole naturally and flew back into the trees.
It all happened incredibly quickly, but I was fortunate to photograph much of the sequence. Watching a Great Grey Owl successfully hunt from such close range was an extraordinary experience and one of the highlights of the trip.
Another remarkable encounter came while we were looking for Pygmy Owls.
We could hear their very distinctive calls and soon realised there were two birds. One would call and the other would answer, allowing us to gradually work out where they were amongst the trees.
Eventually we located the female sitting on a branch. As we watched her, the male suddenly flew in and the pair mated in front of us. He then flew away and, shortly afterwards, the female flew into a small hole in a nearby tree that they appeared to be intending to use as their nest site.
It was an incredibly fortunate piece of behaviour to witness.
At the time we deliberately didn’t share the encounter. With the pair apparently preparing to nest there, Ken was understandably concerned that revealing the site could result in additional attention and disturbance around the tree. Sadly, a few months later the tree itself blew down, so the nesting site no longer exists and I can now share the story of what we witnessed.
Across the four days we averaged somewhere between eight and twelve owl sightings a day. Great Grey Owls accounted for many of those encounters, but alongside the Pygmy Owls we also found a Northern Hawk Owl and a Barred Owl.
Snowy Owls were the one target that eluded us. We spent an entire afternoon searching the surrounding prairies but without success. Much of the winter snow had already melted, so any remaining Snowy Owls should have been considerably easier to spot against the exposed landscape. Despite covering plenty of ground, we couldn’t find one.
That hardly detracted from what had been an exceptional few days.
My flight home was timed well enough that on the final day Ken could drop me at the airport a little early for my overnight flight back to the UK. By then I’d accumulated more than 80 keeper images from the trip along with a good selection of video clips.
From seeing my first Great Grey Owl on a telegraph post against the pink morning sky and the Rocky Mountains, to watching another catch a vole almost at my feet and witnessing the Pygmy Owls together at their prospective nest site, the trip had given me far more than I’d hoped for.
I couldn’t wait to go back — and the following year, I did returning for another 4 days with Ken. This time I had rather more success with the Snowy Owls, with two of the images from that trip later licensed by BBC Wildlife Magazine for its September 2026 cover feature, Snowbound.
Read about the BBC Wildlife Magazine feature →
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